Where do you get this slowness of results from? I went to bed at 4.30am, six and a half hours after the close of poll, knowing the results in all 44 of the Wards for my City Council, the results of over 50% of the Scottish Parliamentary constituencies, and a large chunk of the Welsh Assembly results. It had already been decreed by the Electoral Commission (an unaccountable, undemocratic body) that the Referendum would not commence counting until 4pm on Friday, and the figures were known by 6.30pm. The only results we're still waiting on are in Northern Ireland which uses the farce of a system called Proportional Representation. Thank the Good Lord we had enough sense to reject any move away from the highly satisfactory First Past The Post system, where the person with the most votes actually wins, and we're not held to ransom by three so-called Indpendents!
COMMENT: Because it takes so much longer to know the result in the UK compared to New Zealand, Canada or Australia. I've worked on elections in all four countries and the UK is by far the slowest to release results because they do not release provisional numbers.
We also vote on a Saturday in Australia and the polls shut at 6pm, so the sitting up till the early hours of the morning waiting for results always comes as a shock to us.

And the result is: 69% in favour of retaining first past the post. It's Thurday 5 May and across the United Kingdom voting is underway. Polls close at 10pm. The elections are National referendum on whether to retain first past the post voting for the House of Commons or switch to the alternativ...